Morning in Budapest
by Kate Marley
Summary: On a dreary autumn day in the 1990s, Hungary is commuting to work via public transport. She is reminiscing about Austria and the history they share.


Hungary was looking out of her kitchen window, warming her fingers on the coffee mug in her hands. Buda Castle Hill was vaguely perceptible in the mist. It was getting cold.

She hadn't bothered to turn up the heating. The heating system of her flat was over fourty years old; as old as the building in which it was mounted. It needed time to start; it wasn't exactly economic; and she would be heading off to work in a few minutes anyway. So why waste money on it when she could just huddle a little closer into her cozy sweater. Austria had made it for her, knitting patterns in red and white and green—the colours of her flag.

 _Doesn't it look too Christmassy?_ he had worried when he had gifted it to her last Christmas. She had only laughed.

 _You're gifting a warm sweater to me for Christmas, and you're asking me if it looks too Christmassy? You're truly one of a kind._ But of course she had understood what he had meant. _No, no, it doesn't. There's no Christmas trees or reindeer or jingling bells on it, right?_

Austria was so worrisome. Treading around her in tiptoes; always worried something he did or said might be inappropriate or, even worse, might be considered encroaching by her.

Of course she knew where that came from. Neither of them had forgotten the times when she had rebelled against her Austrian overlords, trying to reassert the freedom she had had under the reign of the crescent.

The peoples under Sadık's aegis had been allowed to live according to their customs, at least more or less. All that had interested the Ottoman Empire had been whether they acknowledged him as their supreme lord, and whether they were paying their tributes regularly. Like Rome. Yes, Rome had always been Sadık's role model; something many of her children seemed to have forgotten nowadays.

She had not. Neither had Austria.

The Habsburgs were different. Their rule had been so much more rigorous; so considerate about details. Restricting the powers of her nobles.

Oh, how she had been craving for self-government. How she had wanted to throw that young, arrogant Austrian off his annoyingly white horse, in remembrance of the days Magyar had done the same to anyone who had had the misfortune to come within range of his arrows.

Her gaze drifted to the only modern arrows in her flat: The clock-hands were nearing full hour. Time to empty her mug and catch the metro.

* * *

Black backpack around one shoulder, she hastened through the doors of the metro line towards Buda. The "Watch out" of the _Doors closing_ message could already be heard: _Kérem vigyázzanak, az ajtók záródnak._ She flopped on the last free seat in her vicinity while the doors were slamming shut.

The warning was well advisable. Austria would always wince when they took the metro, claiming Viennese metro doors were closing much more softly. Hungary would then mumble something about how fitting that was, considering he was also much softer than her.

Of course that wasn't even half the truth. Eastern bloc metros in general were much deeper below ground level than western ones, and the doors of all the carriages were closing pretty harshly. Still, it was nice to have him cling to her arm, fearful of doors slamming shut between the two of them and, perhaps, of getting lost.

It puzzled her how he kept holding on to her and how he kept assuming she was still grudging him all the same. The strangest part, however, was that he had been much more confident about his own role in her and her children's many uprisings before and during their marriage. He would emphasise how he had only been fulfilling the orders of his rulers and their commanders. More specifically, he would denounce the killing of her prime minister, Batthyány Lajos, in 1849 and blame himself for being unable to argue better against Julius von Haynau's instigations to execute him.

His displeasure _then_ had taken the form of anger; something Hungary understood only too well because she had been furious herself. Nowadays, however ... Nowadays, he was this overly humble person, overcautious whenever he was near her, and that was annoying.

She didn't miss the past, much less her past under Habsburg rule. But she missed the honesty and openness of their relationship before and during their marriage. Austria would stand up for her every time somebody wanted to dismiss her opinion because she was a woman, and she would stand up for him every time someone made a move to threaten him physically. They had been an unusual couple; far from likely, perhaps, to have a functioning relationship. But that was what they had had.

In October 1918, Héderváry Erzsébet, personification of Hungary, had not left her husband Roderich Edelstein, personification of Austria. In October 1918, Héderváry Erzsébet, personification of Hungary, had made the decision to set her people free from Austrian rule. Sadly, that was not to have without making the decision to walk out on Roderich Edelstein, personification of Austria.

She still didn't know what had been the last straw: Her leaving him? Him losing his empire? Suffering through both at the same time? In any case, he had never been the same ever after, and perhaps it was idle to try to track down an exact cause.

Since that time, his attitude towards her was at times bordering on subservience, and it was making her furious. She wanted her confident husband back. The one who didn't flinch and fall silent when 1848 was mentioned. The one who would get up and argue that, yes, he did think it had been necessary to quell the Hungarian 'rebellion' in order to keep the empire together. Who would then proceed to acknowledge that the Austrian side had been lacking in moderation during and after the revolution, and that Batthyány's execution was definitely an example of the latter.

 _Can't you stand your ground anymore?_ she thought, holding on to her backpack more tightly. Her anger seemed to be so perceptible it made a middle-aged woman next to her inch a little farther away.

They had had a talk about this in the 1920s already, and it had been better afterwards. But after the _Rendszerváltás_ —the regime change of 1989 in which she had freed herself again, this time of quite a different sort of oppression; after that, he had relapsed to this annoyingly docile attitude.

 _So that's why we need to talk again,_ she thought, yanking the handle of the nearest metro door to the side with perhaps more force than strictly necessary. People were moving out of her way while she rushed to the escalator, walking past other passengers, upwards and out of the steep stairway. Adjusting her backpack, she headed towards the parliament building.

At times like these, she felt soaring jealousy for Austria's pretty villa near Schönbrunn Castle. She had had a similar home in Buda, lovingly cared for, with lots of pretty flowers in her garden. It had survived everything; even the Battle for Buda in the beginning of '45.

But not Communism. Rákosi Mátyás had made it his personal mission to emphasise her new role as the model Communist worker, allocating a flat in a newly built workers' settlement for her. Meanwhile, her lovely house was torn down. She didn't know if it had been Rákosi's own idea or if he had had orders from Moscow, and perhaps it didn't matter all that much. The result was that she only saw Buda Castle Hill in the distance when she was looking out of her windows, and that she needed thirty minutes by public transport to even reach the Danube.

Looking into the dull eyes of her fellow commuters on the metro, she had sometimes wondered if she was the only one who was always full of simmering anger when she came near the castle hill. These thoughts were recurring after the 1956 Revolution had been quelled, once again by an oppressor.

But no. It wasn't just her own anger that had barely been waiting for a chance to come to the surface again. And this time, there was no violence—save for the one taken out on the electric fence at her borders, causing the first fissure in the Iron Curtain.

Ironically, Austria had been much more confident towards her during the Pan-European Picnic. He had been as happy and, at the same time, as nervous as everyone about the situation, but the caution with which he now treated her had come later. Perhaps it had resurfaced as the open border was becoming more normal; as the subtle tensions between his people and hers had become more noticeable. Still... She had hoped he would be able to distinguish between the Hungarian attitude towards Austria, the country, and her own attitude towards him, Roderich Edelstein.

 _Well,_ she thought, _if you don't get it just like this, I need to tell you directly._ And that was what she would do: At the weekend, Austria would come for a visit. But first of all, she would continue to work on the state that was, finally, governed only by her own people.

* * *

 **Notes:**

This story is inspired by the song _Hajnali járat_ ("Early morning ride") by the Hungarian band AWS. At first, it was supposed to be set in the present time, but somehow, it evolved into something more historical. The downside is that I had to scrap a passage that had Hungary taking a bus over the Danube (that would have matched part of the lyrics) because, well, she wouldn't have had a reason to do so in the '90s. It also means the story has become more reflective and less atmospheric/tied to Budapest than I originally intended. Well, well. Maybe next time...


End file.
